In Europe there is a similar event that I am facilitating as well.Identity Open Space April 26-27 in Brussels.

The Interenet Identity Workshop is about moving user-centric identity ideas and technologies forward. Come to this event to learn more, participate in the community and shape the future of the web.

What is User-Centric Identity?User-centric identity starts with the individual, and his or her needs. It is about working relationships and services between individuals and retailers, employers, membership bodies, and organizations of any kind. It is not about a centralized solution, or anybody’s silo. As such it solves different problems than the familiar ones of providing authentication and authorization services within a single organization, or federation between different organizations.

What is going on in the field?

OpenID is emerging as a protocol for SSO across the web.

It has major adoptions from sites like AOL, Digg, FaceBook, and

open source platforms like MediaWiki, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla using it,

startups are forming around this emerging field like NetMesh, Sxip, and JanRain,

and reputation services are emerging like Opinity and Jyte.

Legal and Social issues about norms and uses of identity continue to surface.

How can I share my information and know it will not be misused?

How can we innovate better End User License Agreements?

How do young people, men, women and diverse groups understand and represent identity differently online?

How do online and offline identity relate?

How does ‘official identity‘ and ‘web constructed identities’ relate?

What is the role of anonymity and pseudonimity and how are they explicitly supported in this ecology?

What about Mobile Devices and Identity?

Vendor Relationship Management as an potential market segment is emerging

Microsoft Cardspace has been released on to Vista and XP desktops and Symantec has a user-centric Identity management product for the desktop.

There are several Open Source efforts to weave tools together – like Higgins, OSIS, Bandit.

Liberty protcols continue to be deoployed in enterprise and on the web.

Who is going to be there?
User-centric identity is an extremely active and growing conversation involving many converging development efforts — by open source communities, by vendors large and small, and by customers of all sizes. Internet Identity Workshops are where Mozilla, Symantec Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Liberty Alliance, WS*, Verisign, Red Hat, SixApart, Kintera, Sxip, Cordance, NetMesh, JanRain and many other projects and companies meet to work toward common goals and real solutions. They are joined by customers of all sizes as well.

You won’t find a higher ratio anywhere of real productivity to idle chat and marketing BS that are typical to many conferences. They are informal and purpose-driven. In every IIW so far, a high degree of progress has been made, within and between separate development efforts.

The workshops are organized by a working group within Identity Commons, and are run on Open Space practices and principles*. There are no formal presentations, no keynotes, no panels. Instead, topics are vetted and chosen by participants when the workshop convenes, and open meetings are organized and scheduled for the day that follows.

Cost:
We are committed to keeping this conference open and accessible. If you want to come we want you there. If cost is an issue please contact us and we can discuss how to make it work.

* Students – $50
* Independents – $175
* Corporate – $300

The fees are used to cover the cost of the venue, organization, snacks and lunch both days. We encourage you to pre-register since we will limit attendance at the event to 200 people. The IIW workshop in December was strongly attended and we expect strong interest in this one as well.